22 Colleges Where You Can Earn a Degree for Free. Seriously.

Brian L. Frank—ReduxAt Deep Springs College in California, students pay their way by working on the ranch.

You'll never have to take on a student loan at these schools.

A few new proposals are calling for making college free nationally—either for two years or all four. But experts say it could be some time before we can entirely say goodbye to tuition bills on all schools across the nation.

In the meantime, there are some places where college is already free, either for all students or those who fit certain criteria. So if you want to avoid ever signing your name to a student loan, you might add these schools to your list.

Programs that make students earn their keep:Those enrolled at Alice Lloyd, Berea, and Deep Springs colleges work to pay their full tuition—at Deep Springs, on the school ranch and farm.

Programs with a religious bent: Barclay College, a bible college, is an example of a religious school that is free.

Programs that recognize need: Very highly selective universities with big endowments have also acted in the last several years to make tuition free for students from families with certain incomes—MIT for families that earn $75,000 or less, Harvard and Yale $65,000 or less, and Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, Duke, Brown, and Texas A&M $60,000 or less.

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This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.